when I look back now
at the abuse I took from
her
I feel shame that I was so
innocent,

we had goldfish and they circled a
in the bowl on the table near the
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting
to be happy, told me, ‘be happy He

Bach, I said, he had 20 children.
he played the horses during the da
he f—ed at night
and drank in the mornings.
he wrote music in between.

self—congratulatory nonsense as th
famous gather to applaud their see
greatness
you
wonder where

some people never go crazy.
me, sometimes I’ll lie down behind
for 3 or 4 days.
they’ll find me there.
it’s Cherub, they’ll say, and

this head like a saucer
decorated with everything
as lip to lip we hang
in mechanical joy;
my hands blaze with arias

the goldfish sing all night with g
and the whores go down with the st
the whores go down with the stars
I’m sorry, sir, we close at 4:30,
besides yr mother’s neck is dirty,

O lord, he said, Japanese women,
real women, they have not forgotte
bowing and smiling
closing the wounds men have made;
but American women will kill you l

with an Apple Macintosh
you can’t run Radio Shack program
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file

I reached up into the top of the c
and took out a pair of blue pantie
and showed them to her and
asked “are these yours?”